Christmas-ing Up the Office...

Raindrops on roses... whiskers on kittens... bright copper kettles... warm woolen mitt---oh, forget that! At this time of year, my favorite things are Christmas decorations! 

Some people fall in love with a certain aspect of Christmas holiday decorations, be it snowmen, reindeer, Santa Clauses, or penguins, and a certain style and they end up collecting that thing the rest of their lives. For others like me, we go through stages. It's too hard not to love ALLTHETHINGS about Christmas decorations... snowmen with their carroty noses, Santa Clauses mostly in their chubby glory, reindeer and moose with antlers for days, polar bears with their inquisitive black noses... how do you pick just one forever and ever?! And then there are lights... white, blue, purple, pink, red, green, orange!  ALLTHECOLORS!!!

Sorry. Getting a little excited. =)  

Anyway... this year I unburied some boxes in the basement that I hadn't gotten into for a few years. Oh, the feels... my inner child was all warm and fuzzy and excited and happy. So this year I pulled those old favorites out for my office, where I swear I spend more time than I do in my own house. 

I'm not quite there, but here are some peeks... 

 These are a few of my snowmen that have more of a glazed finish.  I'll be keeping the two larger pieces up in January since they're not particularly Christmas-y.

My tastes swing from modern to country depending on my mood that year.  I'm not particularly into vintage, just a little bit of country charm. Years ago I went through a serious addiction to Crazy Mountain snowmen and santas...

I ended up with most of my Santas on one shelf...

And lots of snowmen on another...

And  a little of everything on my counter...

I bought some real greenery as well.  This one with the snowman pick and the cute red bucket is really beautiful in person. I'm hoping to keep it alive and bring it home after the holidays. If they'd had more, I'd have bought several of them... I guess I should just feel lucky that I even found this one. =)

And my favorite little bears. I picked up these crafty little bears at a fair in 1998. Handcut on a jigsaw and handpainted. I used to have names for the little bear family, but I can't remember them anymore. LOL



And the piece de resistance... my candy bowl morphs from a glass bowl to this...

It was an extra large planter I found at a Michael's years ago. People's eyes get HUGE when they see it. And then they can't keep their fingers out of it. LOL But hey, it's Christmas. I only put out things like taffies and Jolly Ranchers and Nerds during the rest of the year, but Christmas holidays means chocolates. This year, there's a second bowl full of fruit for the healthy snackers though, along with some peppermints and candy canes for the chocolate haters (crazy peeps, I know, right?).

Hope your holiday decorating is done and you are just basking in the warm fuzzy feels of the holidays!  Not much time left for crafty Christmas gifts, so off to the craftroom I go...

See you soon, and til then, happy crafting!
Christy

Where's My Marshmallow World?

The weather outside is ridiculously warm. The high today was 64 or 65 degrees (that's 18 degrees for all you Celsius fans). Two weeks to the big day and baby, it's not cold outside. I pity any poor horse trying to drag a sleigh over the rough most definitely snow-less hills and dales. Maybe I'll channel my inner child and turn on my bedroom air conditioner on high power and snuggle up under my down comforter with a cup of hot cocoa. Think I can make it snow inside?  LOL

Despite the lack of chill in the weather, I spent a lovely Christmas-y day with my friend Sue, the baker. Sue, the baker, is married to John, the chef, so life at their house usually revolves around the kitchen and is always yummy. Every Christmas season possible in the last nearly 20 years we've been friends, I've spent at least one day at Sue's house while she bakes cookies or makes candies for her friends, family and coworkers. Sometimes they're super fancy; sometimes they're the basics that everyone loves. This year it's a return to the basics... snickerdoodles, chocolate chip and cream cheese, those peanut butter ones with the Hershey kisses that have always looked like weird little hats to me...

Some years I get into the fun and make some treats for my own crowd. This year I decided to do one of my favorites. White chocolate peppermint Oreos.  I'm not a huge mint fan, and I'm not big on white chocolate either. (I can never tell why they call it chocolate when there's nothing very chocolate about it. LOL) But crush up some Spangler peppermint candy canes, toss some mini Oreos in white chocolate and put them together and yum! Instant Christmas flavor. =)

They're not particularly pretty this year,.. they look like they've been attacked by a peppermint virus. LOL  They taste good though, so they should go pretty well at the party on Friday.

So, crafty plans for this week are to fight the clock as I'm running out of time for a few Christmas events Friday and Saturday.  Unfortunately this is definitely a year for sending store bought cards along with a few key handmade ones. I think for 2016 I might start playing along with a couple of the Christmas card challenges and get a head start on next Christmas. Squirrel will just have to close her eyes on those posts. ;)   My house is in a bit of a shambles with the needed structural renovations. I'm not decorating at home, so my office is going to get Christmas-ed up. Aaaand I'm a couple of birthday cards behind. So lots to do...  hopefully I will be back to share with you.=)

Til then, happy holidays and happy crafting!
Christy

Come to the Crafty Side... We have supply hoards...

Hi. My name is Christy, and I'm a craft supply hoarder. Rows of colorful inks and glitters. Stacks of cardstock lined up in rainbow order. Cute images on rubber stamps and a box full of Copics to bring them to life. Heavenly patterned papers. Sequins and jewels that sparkle, Dies in all shapes and sizes. Three kinds of glue, 

Forget recreational drugs... I'm hooked on recreational crafting. LOL

So, how many of you succumbed to the siren call of Black Friday crafty sales over the American Thanksgiving holiday?  I'm pretty sure I'm not all alone... or my orders would have been packed and shipped a heck of a lot quicker. =) 

My crafty time this evening has been spent unpacking new beauties and making notes on the flood of crafty ideas as I pu them in their perfect little homes in my craft room. I don't get all crazy with the labels a la Jennifer McGuire, but my dies do get unwrapped and put onto magnet sheets in pouches. I also put some gorgeous little sequins in their new home in my pop and lock storage container. 

And I enter all my new stamps and dies into my crafty inventory. Have you ever loved a stamp or die soooo much that you ordered it twice? LOL  Well, in my defense, most of my duplicate ordering has been accidentally putting two in my cart on the same order.  Except for one time when I actually ended up duplicating nearly an entire order because I didn't put it away and it got buried by some empty boxes I was saving for shipping. I thought for a while that I had just wanted them so much I imagined that I owned them. I have a vivid imagination. It wouldn't be the first time I'd mistaken daydreaming for reality. LOL.  Anyway, I decided to make myself a crafty inventory spreadsheet which is even indexed for image keywords and themes. Yes, I'm an admin assistant and just a wee bit of a tech nerd. Why do you ask?

So... tomorrow night it will be back to using my goodies, along with a few glitter-shaking, sparkle-induced oooohing and aaahhhing sessions like a fae goblin obsessively delighting in her treasure, and getting my craft on now that I've got more than the classic crafty 6" to work in, and everything is tucked away into my hoard. 

Hope your crafty time this season is well-enjoyed and well-spent!  See you soon!

Happy crafting!

Christy 

Walkin' down Memory Lane to Christmas 1993

Today I pulled out the Christmas decorations and found a couple of extra-dusty, cobwebby boxes in the back corner of the basement that I haven't opened in 10 years.  Inside I found some Christmas magic... a trip down Memory Lane to circa 1993. I had an interest in craftiness in my teens, but it wasn't until my 20s that I started actually doing much of any crafting on a regular basis. I first got into needlepoint and embroidery but soon after I branched out into acrylic paints. I painted anything that didn't move, and maybe some things that did. LOL

My first adventure into painting was during the Christmas season, 1993. It's not much to look at, but it certainly brings back memories for me...

I even remember the purple kitchen sponge I cut to make the square I needed. It's amazing what weird details your brain will hold onto... and yet not be able to remember what you just walked in the room to get. =\

Ah, well..... so, tomorrow it's back to the crafty table, with Copics and stamps and paper instead of acrylic paint and paper mache boxes. =)

Til then, happy crafting!
Christy

Alas, alack... and a Doctors Day card

Ok, so I'm already a fail on Blogmas. <facepalm>   I fell asleep last night instead of getting online to blog, so there's Day Two blown.  Well, at least the pressure is off! LOL

So, Day Three... I have started crafting, but since I'm working on some surprises, I can't even show you what I'm working on. Smooth move, huh?

Instead, I'll show you the card that derailed my plans to blog last spring....

Welcome to Doctors Day Card 2015.

We were moving to a new building this year after being in the old location for 100 years, so I found an old image of the original hospital building. It was a reproduction of an old postcard, and it had those really strange early 1900s colors and a fake canvas texture print. So I lightened it and printed in grayscale and recolored it using Tombow markers. And did I just color it all one color? Oh, no. Crazy girl used four markers on the building alone and two greens on the bushes and trees. (Why do we do these things to ourselves???)

  I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for in a green cardstock and I wanted a bit of aging, so I took hot press watercolor paper and applied nice heavy coats of Peeled Paint Distress Stain. A thin strip or two of gold metallic cardstock, and done. And I just realized, I took a picture of the one I had done crooked and then pulled apart to straighten. Yeah, I was firing on all cylinders there. sheesh.

Anyway. All done.  Except that there were 40 of these puppies. You learn something every time you do a new project. This was the project on which I learned that I press really hard... too hard... down the paper while I use a wire trimmer to keep the paper in place.  I also learned that I can grip my markers too hard.  After 40 of these over the course of a week, I was having trouble using my hands. As an admin who uses a computer keyboard constantly all day long, this made for poor, achy, crampy fingers for weeks afterward.  Yep. That was the big signal.  I'm OLD, or at least my casing is. I've been told that's the sign... some body part that worked just fine no matter what abuse and torture you might have put it through when you were 20 now says, "Nope. That's it. I'm done. Now go away and let me rest."

My inner child is having problems with this concept. Outer adult-inner child conflict is problematic.

Anyway, as I was saying, 40 of these.  They went over well, but that put a kibosh on crafty adventures for a couple of months after that. I've learned to respect my hands in the months since then (and to lighten up my deathgrip on my writing utensils LOL). Next year, forget handmade... I'll do 'em up on the computer and have the printer do all the work. Ha!

So, that's it for today. Hope you are having a lovely December... may the days be long enough for you to thoroughly enjoy the holiday season. Unless you're anti-holiday, in which case I wish for you that time flies and before you know it we're deep in the January doldrums.

Til tomorrow!

Happy Crafting!
Christy

A New Chapter

Hello, my crafty friends!

Ok, so I didn't plan to be gone quite this long...  As many of you know, my last post was, understandably, a bit of a bummer. And I've felt guilty that such a sad post has been the first thing visitors have seen for the past three months. I thought I would be ok... writing that post about Olisa made it seem like it happened to someone else. I felt better after writing it. And she was "just a dog". Except that she wasn't. And I must have still been in shock a bit. Or maybe denial. Christmas didn't seem very jolly.  And I spent a lot of time avoiding the craftroom over the next month afterwards when I realized how quiet everything was without her. I would sit here and the silence would be deafening. Even watching movies it didn't feel right. The "wrong" dog was at my feet, and there was no whuffling and sleep-running, barking at noises from the neighbors or the snowplows, or 30,000 trips to the bathroom for a drink. (Out of the water bowl on the floor. What were you thinking?) I never realized how much noise she made until all of it was gone.

Anyway, I decided to spend January organizing my thoughts for the next year. I hate the whole new year's resolutions thing, but still, it was as good a time as any to think about what I wanted because 2013 and 2014 were NOT what I wanted. At all. So, organize my thoughts, I did. I thought I would be back in February, but time, illness (mutant flu and ornery chest colds that turn into bronchitis were prevalent at work this year - I got the latter), and a bit of a dead mojo battery were against me. I was sick with that nasty cough for two and a half weeks.

Now that I can breathe again, the craftroom is organized, and my mind seems to be on a certain path instead of wandering all over the world inside my head, I am ready to go! Changes are coming... the first to my blogs. As we all know, some of my blogposts tend to ramble juuuuuust a tad. I've noticed myself that I follow so many blogs that it's hard to get to everything. I missed reading for less than a week and I have 1000 blogposts that I missed. Let's not even get into Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, although I do better with Instagram. More "insta" I guess. Anyhoo, this year I'm trying for short and sweet. (After THIS post, obviously. LOL)  But I decided to give myself an outlet for my prattle. Not to mention a place to post my experiences trying out new techniques, new coloring mediums, and even new crafts beyond papercrafting. I'd really like to learn to knit. Or crochet more than just a never-ending chainstitch. LOL

My new blog, Christy Beans' Crafty Journey, will be sort of a diary for my artistic journey; this blog will be where I post my finished work to the "digital fridge". I hope that some of you will join me from time to time on my journey... it's always good to have crafty companions along. =)

Whether you only check in for a peek at the fridge, or you travel along with me on my crafty journey, I appreciate each and every one of you stopping by.

Happy crafting and I will see you very soon!
Christy

PS I can't bear not to have a picture in this post, so here's one of my finished crafty bits from last week!